Tag: Blogs

Measure What Matters

Posted on by Coegi

One of my long-standing mantras at Coegi is ‘Measure What Matters’.

So when the ANA released a report entitled ‘Media KPIs That Matter’, I was more than a little intrigued.  What the report found won’t surprise too many of us that work in performance marketing: most brands focus on KPIs that don’t really align with their business objectives.  

So why is this?  For starters, there is a lot of pressure for digital campaigns to be ‘data driven’.  I bet if the ANA asked if their members organizations are data driven, 100% would say yes.  The challenge is that there is too much data for the decision makers to truly understand. For marketing veterans that came from creative or PR backgrounds (that weren’t exposed to digital media buying earlier in their careers), it is challenging to grade the effectiveness of an omni-channel digital marketing.   Thus, they lean on the stats they feel most comfortable with: CPM, CPC and CTR.  Website traffic, reach and completion rates.  What we have longed referred to at Coegi as vanity metrics. To be fair, media efficiency should be a factor, but far less than many brands think. As my friends at The Trade Desk say, you can’t report on CTR on an earnings call.  

But what about ROAS?

Isn’t that the magic metric we should all be optimizing to anyways?  It should be in theory, but in practice, it all depends on attribution.  Is 100% of the conversion credit going to the last touch or last impression?  There are very few digital programs that are even attempting multi-touch attribution, and those that try are stymied by walled gardens that don’t share a unified measurement framework.  ROAS numbers are only as accurate as the data you use to analyze it, and too often there is more noise than signal in last-touch attribution.  Recent changes to app tracking on Apple phones and the impending elimination of third-party cookies on Google Chrome make attribution all the more challenging.

So what about the agencies?  Isn’t it their job to advise their clients as to the metrics they should be measuring?   Certainly many performance strategists are pushing to move towards more meaningful measurement, but it often involves a lot more institutional buy-in at the brand that you would expect.  Advocating an advanced measurement framework at the end of a proposal just isn’t going to cut it.  Often, you not only have to educate the marketing team, but the C-suite, product and sales teams as well.  

Creating a path to measure what matters

So what is the path forward for marketers trying to determine their media KPIs?  From my perspective, there is no singular KPI that defines success for any digital marketing campaign.  Instead, we should build custom measurement frameworks across multiple KPIs, that incorporate not just media efficiency metrics, but also engagement, brand lift, transactional data, and ROAS analysis, to get a better understanding of your digital program as a whole. Furthermore, it can be worthwhile to revisit the more academic and statistical forms of analysis, such as media mix modeling, matched market tests, and regression analysis, to get to the heart of success. 

Recommended reading:

Driving Marketing Results for Cryptocurrency Brands

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

A cryptocurrency brand challenged Coegi and our partner, Wachsman, a communications-based strategy consultancy, to drive segmented audiences to register for an online event. Primary KPIs were event site visitations, measured on-site clicks, and ticket purchases. The main challenge was to identify and capitalize on the appropriate social media platforms to align with the brand’s niche audience segments.

Highlights

4,720
Site Views

.96%
Click Through Rate

757,279
Impressions

Challenge

Emerging fintech brands, especially those in the crypto space, face unique challenges not commonly found in the traditional finance sector. There are ever-changing societal, economical, and psychographic trends along with advertising regulations. Fintechs can often struggle with not only identifying and garnering the interest of niche customer segments, but also in harnessing the power of digital advertising.

Solution

Due to digital advertising restrictions set on crypto brands by a variety of social media platforms, Coegi and Wachsman were not immediately able to leverage the platform most widely used by the brand’s audience. Through internal research and creative strategy, we were able to narrow down to Facebook and Instagram – with Reddit as an added opportunity for topic-based targeting. With Facebook and Instagram, we leveraged interest targeting, retargeting, and look-a-like audiences. Each targeted ad was backed up by months of research and brand exercises completed by the Wachsman team, and supported by Coegi.

The campaign performed above average, concluding with 4,720 site views and a .96% CTR, compared to our .3% industry benchmark. In addition to strong social media ad engagement, the target audience proved further interest in the brand. The site experienced 191 on-site action clicks. 183 of those clicks were attributed to the “Get Tickets” button denoted on the social media ads. This was achieved while maintaining an average CPM of under $4 and CPC under $3.

During the campaign, the addition of a website retargeting and look-a-like audience improved the overall performance. We drove a CTR 41% above the campaign average and the highest on-site conversion rate at .028%.

Your description here

Growing Omnichannel Retail Solutions for a Wine Brand

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi helped a wine brand grow both its online and in-store sales by executing an omnichannel digital campaign. Leveraging strategic micro-targeting, paid social media, and grocery delivery app relationships, the campaign achieved impressive ROAS, along with increased purchases and store visits to retailers in the wine brand’s distribution network.

Highlights

5X
Return on Ad Spend

4,500
Direct to Consumer Purchases

9,700
Store Visits

Challenge

A “healthier-for-you” wine brand came to Coegi to expand its omnichannel retail presence. In 2020, they were facing the challenging effects of COVID-19 on shopping behaviors, as well as growing consumer demand for online alcohol sales. Our client needed to provide a convenient way for consumers to shop online while still growing brick-and-mortar sales.

Solution

Coegi helped our wine client create an omnichannel retail solution using digital media.

First, we leaned heavily into Facebook to support online sales using a social commerce ad along with a dynamic retargeting catalog ad. Throughout 2020, these two campaigns alone drove over 4,500 DTC purchases with an exceptional average ROAS of 6.76x. 

We also built a precise shopper marketing campaign on Facebook using co-branded retail carousels to target major DMAs on a national scale. The click-through URL showed consumers a list of nearby stores. We then deployed a foot traffic lift study, which attributed nearly 9,700 store visits to these campaigns.  

To build on this success, we partnered with grocery delivery providers, Drizly and Instacart. With Drizly, we ran a co-branded Facebook campaign to increase awareness of the brand’s availability on this platform. This allowed us to track delivery purchases attributed to the campaign to understand short-term ROI. Instacart in-platform ads were also a major success. In the final months of the year, the team saw an average ROAS of 5.9x with nearly $83,000 in attributable sales. 

Together, these campaigns increased overall brand equity while also driving an increase in omnichannel sales revenue. 

How to Increase QSR Market Share and Awareness

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

A QSR client was faced with uncertainty as the pandemic hit the United States in March 2020. Coegi was tasked with coming up with a flexible media strategy to address the new dynamic.

Highlights

32%
Increase in Delivery App Purchases

$5MM
Incremental Attributed Sales

Challenge

Most of this QSR’s franchised-owned stores had a 50%+ decrease in traffic and sales in the second half of March 2020. With a limited challenger brand budget, we needed to boost market share while addressing the shift in consumer behavior.

 

Solution

We focused specifically on growing market share among loyal customers. Initially, we drove them to make delivery purchases and later to in-store. To do this, we leveraged existing first-party data that was tied to point-of-sale. 

The outcome was a proprietary scoring model, dubbed “The Crave Score.”  This custom scorecard analyzed brand lift attributes, visitation, and point of sale data to dynamically align budget allocation and creative strategy. It also allowed us to segment based on store visit frequency and share of wallet.

For high share of wallet customers who hadn’t visited recently, we focused on high frequency with ads promoting top-selling sandwiches. We focused spend on areas with high pre-COVID brand recognition, knowing that consumers would be more selective during this time.  

Then, as stimulus checks were distributed, we applied lookalike modeling against the strongest customer segments to identify high potential new consumers. 

These were the key results: 

  • 32% increase in delivery app purchases in 6 key markets.
  • $5MM in incremental attributed sales in the Q2 post-COVID period
  • Positive press write ups in Bloomberg and Restaurant Business

The Power of Creative in Building Brand Awareness

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi partnered with a powerhouse creative agency to launch a full-funnel digital campaign, building brand awareness as well as sales for a high-growth wine brand.

Highlights

10.6%
Lift in Standard Ad Recall

1.8%
Lift in Unaided Brand Awareness

1.4%
Lift in Purchase Intent / Consideration

Challenge

The brand tasked the team to produce a campaign that was not only effective in building brand awareness and emotional connection in a very cluttered, complicated category, but also drove trial and consideration across a broader set of consumers. 

Solution

The team executed a performance branding study on Facebook to evaluate brand lift as well as conversion lift for key website events. By comparing control and exposed audiences, incrementality was able to be evaluated. This blended approach allowed for valuable insights into multiple stages of the consumer journey, from brand awareness to purchase intent. 

The study showed positive lift across brand categories, surpassing CPG benchmarks. Ad recall was particularly pronounced, signaling that the creative was successful in driving memorability and that the selected audience resonated with the messaging approach.

Using TikTok Ads to Reach Potential College Students

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi used TikTok ads to help a higher education client drive better results in their marketing campaigns. Our client is a private college located in Kansas City, Missouri which recently lowered their tuition costs. They were looking to boost brand awareness among potential students and encourage them to research more about their institution.

Highlights

82%
Higher CTR than Snapchat

$3.53
Cost Per Page View Conversion

Challenge

A younger audience can be hard to reach effectively in the right place, especially on social media platforms. Reaching a potential college student was top of mind for the team. In the summer 2020 planning stages, it became clear TikTok was the right platform. The app was rapidly becoming one of the most popular apps among high school students. However, the platform was unproven in terms of in feed advertising, as it was a fairly new capability from TikTok.

Solution

The team took a risk and proposed TikTok ads in tandem with Snapchat and Instagram to reach their target audience of high school students.

Snapchat and Instagram were set up as conversion campaigns driving users to complete a form fill or research the brand as a whole by visiting pages with information on campus visits or majors.

The TikTok campaign began as an awareness campaign. It was optimizing towards video views as this aligned with the organic user behavior on the platform. Ads were shown in-feed on TikTok, where users spend the majority of their time on the app. 

Targeting started off relatively broad, reaching potential students interested in education across Missouri and Kansas. The platform only narrows to state level geographic targeting.

The ads focused on key competitive advantages of the college such as optional standardized testing and lower tuition. These were both major decision factors for potential students in light of the pandemic.

The TikTok awareness campaign was so efficient in terms of CPM and results after just one month that the objective was adjusted from video views to driving site visits and actions. 

The TikTok platform saw extremely strong results, driving a 82% higher CTR than Snapchat and 688% higher than Instagram. Users on TikTok were also more efficient to convert at a cost of $3.53 per page view conversion tracked. 

3 Reasons to Use Podcast Advertising

Posted on by Lindsey King

Podcasts have been around for nearly 20 years, but only recently have gained mass appeal among both audiences and advertisers. With growing audiences, loyal listeners, new targeting advances and reporting options, there has never been a better time to explore podcast advertising.

“The growth of podcasting has brought a massive opportunity for advertisers to reach highly engaged, niche audiences.” – Arica McKinnon, Vice President, Client Consulting at Nielsen.

Not sure if podcast advertising is the right tactic for you and your brand’s bottom line? Here are three reasons that may change your mind.

Reason #1: The audiences are there…and growing

An estimated 120 million Americans listened to podcasts in 2021, with a projected growth to 160 million listeners in 2023. Despite a short flatline in listenership in 2020 due to shortened or non-existant commutes (a highly-popular listening time for the avid podcaster), podcast engagement increased notably this year with no signs of slowing down. Furthermore, according to a survey done by NCS Solutions, 88% of current podcast listeners maintained or increased their listening time over the past year. This increase can be attributed to several factors. Those factors include the return of commuting, increased WOM, new shows for niche audiences, and an influx of influencers developing their own shows to flesh out revenue streams and reach their audiences in a new way.

With this growth trajectory, it is no surprise that advertisers are increasing investment in this lucrative channel. According to IAB, podcast ad revenue in the US increased by 19% in 2020 and is predicted to exceed $3B by 2023. This indicates brands are seeing success with podcast advertisinag. As follows, competition for reaching these audiences will continue to build over time. Jumping into the pool of opportunity now will allow you to expand your reach and effectiveness.

Reason #2: More options and flexibility

Podcasts have held the attention of highly-engaged, niche audiences for years. Historically, the only option for brands to advertise in this space was to purchase expensive, inflexible and hard-to-measure direct buys. In recent years, however, the growing popularity of podcasts has created a demand for an updated, more flexible and measurable system for reaching these audiences.

The industry recognized this opportunity and began developing alternative ways to monetize it. The result? A programmatic option called dynamic ad insertion (DAI) has now entered the market, making it easier and more affordable to incorporate this tactic into your media mix.

This biddable technology allows for new audience targeting options, including listening habits, geographic region and weather conditions. Due to the nature of podcasting, there are somewhat limited options for targeted demographics. However, as the technology continues to develop, there will likely be more options on the horizon. Don’t let these limits keep you from investigating this tactic as a viable option.

Reason #3: Listeners are ad-friendly

Not only are the audiences growing, they are receptive and responsive to the ads they hear while listening. A recent study on podcast “super listeners” discovered that 48% of listeners pay more attention to podcast ads than any other media and that 71% of those surveyed say they never, rarely, or only sometimes skip the ads they hear while listening. The study also found 54% of respondents are more likely to purchase a product after hearing an ad for it on a podcast, up from 46% in 2019.

There are a few surface-level reasons for this acceptance. Firstly, most podcasting platforms are free to use and audiences understand they trade the ad for the content. Then, there is the fact that most listeners tune in while doing other activities – driving, cleaning, walking, etc. Their hands are not typically free during these activities so they are more likely to listen through the ad. This is unlike many other ad formats that are easy to scroll by or tap the skip button.

The primary reason audiences are receptive and responsive to podcast advertising, however, is trust and authenticity. Listeners often feel like the host is directly speaking to them. Before the introduction of DAIs, hosts read all podcast ads. Because podcasts tend to attract highly engaged, niche audiences, the hosts became their own breed of influencer. They make trusted recommendations to their highly connected listeners. This has set the stage for advertising to natively work its way into the expected user experience. Host-read spots are still the most highly trusted advertising spot in podcasting, but they have conditioned podcast listeners in general to be more receptive to advertising.

Recommendations

With the growing audience sizes, ad-friendly listener behavior and advancing technology options, reaching your ideal audience in the podcast space has become easier than ever. However, the unique channel constraints may require different strategies than what is successful for your brand on other channels. Here are a few recommendations:

  1. Be creative with your targeting strategy. With limited out-of-box options for DAI placements, hyper-targeting will likely lead to overly expensive and minimal scale results. Instead, research the audiences that are already listening to podcasts and find a happy medium between niche and broad. What podcasts would your target audience be listening to and engaging with? Use interest and affinity-based audience insights to inform your targeting strategy.
  2. Consider the user experience when creating ad content. Like with all advertising mediums, your ad will perform better if it blends into the user experience. Podcast listeners are used to more conversational experience, so ads that are organic, informal and relatable perform best.
  3. Experiment with programmatic and traditional direct-buy placements. A podcast whose audience perfectly aligns with your target may be worth the direct ad buy. But also experiment with more flexible DAI purchases to find the most successful shows and targeting combinations for your brand.
  4. Stay on top of technology developments. Be comfortable in these platforms so you can take advantage of the high value podcast audiences before your competitors.

Further Reading:

Driving Retail Traffic and Sales for a Beauty Brand

Posted on by Coegi

The brief

Coegi created an omni-channel campaign to drive in-store retail traffic and attributable sales for a beauty client during a key sales period.

Highlights

$0.25
Cost Per Store Visit

4.6M
In-Store Conversions

Challenge

Your description here

Solution

Coegi used three core audiences to target this campaign – Eco Consumers, Millennial Moms and College Consumers. Additionally, we used high-intent holiday shopping audiences to maximize the time of year.

We activated these audiences across display and video campaigns, optimizing for reach and completion rate to drive in-store traffic. This was reinforced through retailer-specific creative to ensure shoppers knew where the brand was available. A foot traffic study was also implemented using mobile app ID data to correlate ad exposure with store visitation. 

We took a test and learn approach, using traffic and purchase data to determine top performing retail locations. We then reinforced those top stores in key geos, further building upon sales momentum. This campaign drove over 4.6 million store visits, with an average cost-per-store-visit of $0.25 across all media and millions in sales. This was highly efficient for driving brand consideration compared to the $3-7 product price point. 

Q4 sales reports indicated that the strong revenue numbers were directly tied with efficient cost-per-visit metrics. Analysis of foot traffic conversions also helped identify top markets for the brand. This campaign displayed the importance of combining advanced measurement studies and non-media data to determine the incremental impact of digital media on driving retail traffic and sales. 

Driving Action from a Niche B2B Audience

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

Coegi helped to drive leads from a highly niche B2B audience by pairing LinkedIn’s on-platform lead generation with the clients onboarded first-party data. The results exceeded client expectations and established foundational data for future campaigns.  

Highlights

292
New Leads

$36.55
Cost Per Lead

0.41%
Click Through Rate

Challenge

Our client needed to drive leads from a niche B2B audience – but they meant niche niche. They were only interested in reaching European film, gaming, and television licensing professionals who were in-market to connect with American content owners. They hosted a magazine and website portal where global licensing professionals could make connections and discover new opportunities. The client challenged Coegi to provide a solution to drive this audience to their website, where they would be prompted to share their email address to access the portal. 

Solution

We recognized this request necessitated using an audience-first approach to inform our channel strategy. LinkedIn proved to be the channel with the widest reach of second-party data. Historically, the fewer steps to conversion asked of your audience, the higher the ROI. Knowing this, we used LinkedIn’s on-platform Lead Generation creatives to encourage our audiences to share their contact information without needing to visit the site.

Our client offered two products: an industry magazine and a website portal. The media objective was to drive 150 new email contacts over three months. 

Prioritizing budget on LinkedIn allowed Coegi to craft a strategy that balanced the need for some awareness while focusing on the lead goal. Pairing LinkedIn’s data, lead generation objective and creative, and the client’s first-party data allowed us to nearly double the goal of 150 new email contacts. 

Gaining Traction on YouTube for an Agriculture Brand

Posted on by Coegi

The Brief

An agriculture company needed assistance driving reach and video completions for a video series on their YouTube channel. Using in-stream, bumper and discovery ads on YouTube, the team was able to improve the brand’s overall organic presence.

Highlights

53MM
Impressions

55%
Completion Rate

$0.04
Cost Per Completed View

Challenge

An agriculture company produced a video series for its YouTube channel. But they saw few views and low channel engagement, despite having dozens of videos and a dedicated in-house YouTube team. They wanted to expand reach and video completions to see a greater ROI. However, this proved to be tricky. Most of the video content was longer than 5 minutes, which often loses the user’s attention, unless they are highly invested or are already brand loyalists.

Solution

Coegi worked alongside sister agency, True Media, to amplify content on YouTube to meet the client’s upper-funnel goals. View in-stream and bumper ads for their series introduction video helped increase awareness, with the goal of encouraging users to watch the full series.  Additionally, users who watched the full bumper ad or 30 second in-stream videos were retargeted with other relevant content in the series. 

We also recommended adding in Discovery ads that appear in YouTube search results and video suggestions. In this placement, users are redirected to watch the full video on the brand’s channel, thus meeting the goal of increased video views. 

Despite a quick turnaround time, the team achieved outstanding results from this campaign. With a roughly $100,000 investment, the campaign drove over 53MM impressions across the US and Canada. The average completion rate was 55%, exceeding the 40% benchmark. Cost per completed views were also efficient at just $0.04. Finally, this improved the brand’s overall organic presence. They also achieved over 100,000 earned views across videos that offered added value outside of the campaign investment. 

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